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The smiling mask is fun to wearConcealing what lies beneath All rosey cheeks and compound stare With false and shiny teeth What other face is under there? What lies in its gleaming sheath? Just try it on and have no care The smiling mask is fun to wear.

A group of friends are at a party. They're discussing embryos, abortion, stem cell harvesting. Someone mentions the 14 day rule of ethics committees shutting down. Sort of like the three second rule about food on the floor. Nobody can tell which is grosser.

Questions are asked, speculated upon, but not answered. At what point does a human embryo become human enough to qualify for the human right to life? It's the kind of question a sober person asks a room full of drinkers. Just like a cell, the question divides into more questions that then divide again.

Is it a matter of total number of cells? Then by that logic an elephant should be more entitled to human rights than a human.A matter of complexity then? By that logic the internet is more human than you are. The cosmos too. Silly.

Someone heard they take stem cells from these embyros for treatments.What if they cut the embryo in half and one half was bigger than the other, but the smaller half contained the brain. Which half would the human be in? The consensus of brains unanimously says it would be the brain half.

But does the spark of life exist before the brain forms? So there's more than just brain involved isn't there.

What about the heart? No, that's just a pump. People get their hearts transplanted all the time, and they're still the same person.

One party-goer says he knows the answer. One of the drinkers, naturally. It's very simple. Take any amputee. Person loses a leg at the knee, let's say. But the leg isn't the person, that's just rubbish, maybe some literal kind of white trash. But the part with the person is the bit that the person decides it is for themselves.

Grumbling. Someone calls it a cop out.

The question-answerer shrugs. He'll demonstrate. Amputate himself right here and you'll see what he means. You'll find me in the amputated part, he assures them.

There's a round of come on now, be serious. Let's not hurt ourselves. There isn't even a hacksaw in the house.

But the sewing scissors are already in his hand.

With a ceremonial flourish he raises the scissors and cuts his tip of the finger nail of his left thumb.

Arms, legs, and skull collapse inert on the floor in a tangle. The part of the body containing the man flicks off the scissors and skitters across the floor, an entire person trapped hopelessly in a sliver of keratin.

“Mission complete. Ready for evac,” said agent Fish, his voice heavy with fatigue.It had been one of the long ones. A four week undercover assignment on a secret facility way out in the middle of Earth’s biggest ocean digging up intelligence on its crew, the organisation in charge and its suspicious research projects. The specialist work was the hard part – masquerading as an engineer on the rig in order to copy schematics of the abundant mechanical contraptions used for whatever master plan the furtive directors behind this enterprise were cooking up. Fish was normally a poor choice for such missions, his distinctive appearance being far more difficult to conceal than that of FutureShock’s Class Four cyborgs who could change not only their appearance but their entire bodies to fit any description, to fool all but the most cutting edge identification systems. Nevertheless, they’d picked Fish and put him through major, though reversible, cosmetic surgery; skin grafts, facial modification, and the tacking on of all manner of what he could only describe as “bells and whistles” for his role in the assignment. The primary reason for his designation, however, was not his shrewdness or his coolness under pressure, despite those being key to the role. No, Fish was stationed on this godsforsaken laboratory rig manned by an all new strain of deluded superfascist because he was to carry out orders upon completion of the tedious weeks of espionage to oversee the complete annihilation of the premises and the neutralization of its entire staff. This was, of course, Fish’s speciality.